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Atlas Society Launches 10 Part Lecture Series on Ayn Rand Philosophy

The Atlas Society, a research and advocacy organization promoting Ayn Rand’s ideas, has launched a series of video courses. The courses, which are designed to serve as an introduction to Rand’s objectivist philosophy, will feature presentations from Society members and other experts in Rand’s philosophy. Due to the nature of video courses, students can attend whether they hail from Mississippi or live all the way up by New Hampshire.

The two introductory lectures will help viewers understand why Rand believed that a rational approach to life is a vital human need. In the first lecture David Kelley, the Atlas Society’s chief intellectual officer, discusses reason and explains that it is a cognitive faculty distinct from a person’s perceptual abilities.

Society CEO Aaron Day said that the series will use both audio and video formats to deliver content across multiple platforms and that the series is being targeted at all age groups. David Kelley, Society Founder and Chief Intellectual Officer, explained that currently the lectures don’t have assessment tools built into them.

“Assessment material could lead to problems with scalability. There’s not yet a huge audience of people who want to take the course and do homework,” said Kelley. He explained that as the course evolves the society is considering adding short essay questions, but that if enrollment grows too large it might become “impractical to evaluate essays.”

The first two installments were launched on Nov. 28 and the Society has targeted a January release date for the next two, and February for the fifth and sixth installments. The first video has 250 videos since it was launched.

Day said that the Society had only promoted the video through its internal support network, but that it was planning on giving it a wider distribution push. He explained that since Objectivism is not accepted in academia the Society is relying on its relationship with organizations in the Liberty movement to help promote the lectures.

“We’d like to see huge growth and right now we are working with Students for Liberty, who provide information to self-organize liberty oriented groups in colleges. Since we started working with them six months ago 18 Objectivist clubs have been formed,” said Day.